Saturday nights at a local bar or tavern can be quite busy. Slow drink service hurts the bar/tavern's business. For example, a patron may elect to forego that last drink of soda, juice, milk, coffee, tea, wine, beer, spirits, etc., rather than be forced to wait for a server, waiter/waitress, bartender, or the like to take the patron's next order.
Conventional service techniques require a patron to purchase a “whole” drink. For example, a patron is not provided an opportunity to order a half a drink, a quarter drink, or the like because such service would be impractical. A patron may desire less than a “whole” drink, from a volume consumption perspective. Additionally, a slow drinker might want to purchase a “whole” drink as fractional shares/portions across multiple orders in order to ensure that the drinks are consumed within a threshold temperature. For example, a slow drinker might want to order two half-drinks of soda (rather than a whole glass of soda at a single time) in order to consume the two half-drinks at an ideal (e.g., cold) temperature. Moreover, no two “whole” drinks are poured equally, and thus, a patron that receives less than her fair share may feel cheated.
Furthermore, a patron frequently opens “a tab” with a bartender. Opening a tab often entails the patron giving the bartender a credit card (or some other form of collateral) to serve as security for drink purchases. At the conclusion of the patron's stay, the patron typically closes out the tab with the bartender. Sometimes, particularly when the bar is busy, the bartender may erroneously charge the patron with another customer's drinks. Even if the patron is given a bill of sale prior to finalizing payment, the patron might not notice the overcharge error until much later (e.g., when the patron gets home). If the error is caught prior to finalizing payment, one or more of the patron, the bartender, and the owner of the tavern may feel “cheated,” even if the oversight was a mere accident/mistake. For example, the patron may believe that the bartender or tavern tried to “pull a fast one” to earn more money, and may hold it against the bartender or tavern in the future. The owner of the tavern might suspect that the patron is lying in order to reduce the bill. Similarly, the bartender might suspect that the patron is lying in order to reduce the bill (and ultimately, TIP money that the bartender earns, which is typically a fraction or percentage of the total bill).
In terms of drink service, a tavern or restaurant employs bartenders, wait staff, bus boys, and the like. These employees cost the tavern/restaurant in terms of payment of employee salaries and benefits.
Moreover, with respect to alcoholic beverages, one or more of the employees are asked to check patrons of youthful appearance for a form of identification (e.g., a driver's license, a passport, etc.) to ensure that the patrons are of legal age to consume the alcoholic beverages. Such a process potentially exposes the tavern/restaurant and the employees to liability for failure to adequately enforce the policies associated with the age requirements. For example, a server may simply forget to check a patron's identification (particularly on a busy night), a server may think that another employee (e.g., a bartender) already checked for identification, or a patron might present a fake/phony photo identification or a photo identification of another that looks like the patron. Conversely, if a patron is asked for his/her photo identification on more than one occasion during a visit, the patron may become annoyed.
Even if the tavern/restaurant checks for identification at the door, the tavern/restaurant has to employ staff (e.g., a bouncer) to perform that check. Furthermore, checking identifications at the door may establish a bottleneck in terms of patron flow. Moreover, in some jurisdictions, a tavern/restaurant or employee thereof may be liable for over-serving a patron with intoxicating beverages in the event that the patron is later involved in an accident (e.g., a car accident due to drunk driving).